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By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog You would think that actually defining something would make it easier to recognize. That statement assumes, of course, that you can actually define what you’re trying to see. (I’m reminded of Justice Potter Stewart’s quote on obscenity, “I shall not today attempt further to define…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog I know this will come as a shock to my many (two) readers, but I’m not quite as perfect as I make myself out to be. I, too, have character flaws. One is that I ask questions. A lot of questions. I do so in…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog One rarely thinks of CDI as having a moral dimension. But when we do think about it, we consider ourselves doing the “right thing” for patients to have their complexity of illness fully documented within the medical record. If we divorce ourselves from the financial…
By Cynthia Raymond, RN, MSN, CPC, COC, CCDS, ACM-RN for ACDIS CDI Blog CDI specialist’s work can often be tapered down to two categories of work. One category is concurrent stay reviews where CDI makes efforts to ensure that the medical record is accurate and compliant before final coding. The second category of work is…
By Kathryn Fallah and Karla Accorto for ACDIS CDI Blog CDI is a mix of three categories blended into one, according to Dawn Valdez, RN, LNC, CCDS, CDIP, CDI education specialist with ACDIS in Middleton, Massachusetts. These three categories are: Legal Coding/billing Medical/clinical The legal category deals with query writing, ethics/compliance issues, and finances. Coding and billing…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog Many are familiar with the scene from A Few Good Men where Jack Nicholson’s old-school marine tells Tom Cruise’s younger antagonist, “You can’t handle the truth!” My favorite application of that same line comes from Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks’ 2000-Year-Old Man: “You have some kind of thing…
By Katie Adams for Becker’s Hospital Review CMS published specific codes for billing Medicare for Eli Lilly’s COVID-19 antibody cocktail. The FDA granted emergency use authorization Feb. 9 to the antibody cocktail, a combination of antibodies bamlanivimab and etesevimab. The agency granted emergency use authorization to bamlanivimab Nov. 9. The new approval is based on phase…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for ACDIS CDI Blog Nobody likes being proved wrong, but it’s not always a bad thing. It’s probably okay to be proven wrong when you think it’s a good idea to feed a shark by hand, or to drink a few beers and then tell your buddies you can…
By Laura Dyrda for Becker’s Hospital Review The average salary for medical coding professionals varies by location, practice setting and credential. The American Academy of Professional Coders conducts an annual survey to gather information about coder salary and publishes the report on its website. Here are 25 statistics about 2019 salaries, the most recent data available. By…
By Howard Rodenberg, MD, MPH, CCDS for CDI Blog I just finished reading a book by the historian H.W Brands called The General and the President. It’s a tale of conflict between President Harry S. Truman and Douglas MacArthur, the American commander-in-chief during the Korean War. As you may recall, Truman fired the general after the…